Ray
jeudi 3 avril 2008
17:06
1890 - Paris, 1976
Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky), was an American artist. He was a significant contributor to
both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. Best known in
the art world for his photography, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media and
considered himself a painter above all. He was also a renowned fashion and portrait photographer.
Man Ray had many mentors and inspirations through-out his life, one of the most notable being
Marquis de Sade – a man imprisoned for writing about sexual exploits involving women. Man Ray
was inspired by his obsession with women and also began to explore female eroticism, evident in
many of his photographs.
Man Ray's early paintings were mostly inspired by Cubism, we can see the reduction of all the
forms to geometric forms, cilinders, conus and spheres.
After he met Duchamp his focus changed to Surrealism and Dadaism. In 1915 he also began to get
into photography.
Between 1916 and 1921 Man Ray worked feverishly in the dada and cubist styles
In 1921, Man Ray went to live and work in Paris, where he met Alice Prin,kiki de montparnasse.
Kiki was Man Ray's companion for most of the 1920s. She became the subject of some of his most
famous photographic images and starred in his experimental films. In 1929 he began a love affair
with the Surrealist photographer Lee Miller. Together with Lee Miller — his photography assistant
and lover — Man Ray reinvented the photographic technique of solarization. He also created a
technique using photograms he called rayographs.
It is an approach of double image in "pices" , and of course there is an idea of erotism; which was
really challenging, it was developed after the drawing , which was the illustration of one of the
poems by Paul Eluard. The angle of the body reminds us of Modigliani's distorted Nudes.
1939 Two elements fighting in the surrealist approach, which reminds us of chirico, with the artificial
representation of mankind, with the idea of presence-absence of the human being at the same time,
which comes from the idea of looking for inpiration in primitive art, where the human beings were
represented not in a realistic way, and all the artists of Modern Art were highly inspired by this idea.
He changed the style again, which we can obseve in this painting.
Drawings.
Generally you have drwings wcich are illustrating poems, but here there is something opposite,
there is a text describing the drawings, this is the group of poems The Liberty of hand by paul
Elouard.
The first one is representing the naked woman, out of regular scale in order to insist on physical
presence of woman.
Man Ray was in love with a very beautiful woman, a very good photographer, but after they had had
an affair for some years, she broke the relations, and it was a very hard strike on Man Ray.
The second drawing is the arm, where we can see the double image, with the inger-hand, with the
hand-woman…
The third paintig looks like the way to present a subject from below by the camera;
Here is again the erotic idea.he produced unique art pieces which came to be known as
‘Rayogrammes’ – pictures produced on photographic paper without the use of a camera; the subject
is lain directly on the paper, light is exposed to it and then the paper is developed. The shadow of
the subject is what creates the image, which stressed the influence of light and shadow rather than
the importance of the image itself.
He became a muse of Man Ray
He arrived in 1921 in paris and he met Kiki de Montparnasse, he is considered as a surrealist arist,
because he made smth with the photography , which was the same way surrealst painteres
represented reality, even transformed reality. Instead of making the copy of reality, he transformed
the reality in the way which was no longer the objective photography. He was practising taking
pictures without use of the camera, but he was not pioneer in this technique, but he called this way
"rayography" .
in Paris in 1921, Ray was interested in obtaining unusual effects through certain photographic
processes. In 1921 he created his Rayographs, which were made without the use of a camera, by
directly exposing to light sensitized papers on which various objects were placed. He published an
album of 12 Rayographs entitled Les Champs délicieux (1923).
He was putting the objects directly on the sensitive paper with the light actig on the paper, making
te subject black, it was perhaps just the experiment in the beginning, but the he was really practising
it very often.
We can recognize the comb, the knife, and play with geometric forms, which was used as a kind of
illustration of tristan tzara poems.
There is another connection with the african art, and there is a representation of bla bla Rubenstein,
who was involved in the world of cosmetics, we have the model who is a white woman with a
african sculpture, both figures are naked;
In 1929 he broke with Kiki de montparnasse
In 1930 he discovered a new process, which is in the relation of play with light, and his new
girlfriend, who was a photographer, taught him a lot as well; they were i the studio, and the light
was turned out, bu suddenly being
Ray also exploited the photographic technique of solarization, a process of over-and underexposing
negatives which resulted in prints with strange "bleached" effects.
scare of mth she put on light, and there were the pictures of Man Ray, h decided to save the
paintings somehow and he put it in the black bok, but then opening it, he dicovered, that of course
some parts were really burnt, but at the same time some parts were possible to be seen and he
understood, that he can control the light to make more or less black and white. There was a secret,
which man ray didn't want t share with anybody, because never a photographer succeded in copying
the process. Eve after his death his girlfriend never revealed the secret of the process. This process
was giving somewhet can be called an aura, and he was called the "sculptor of light".
1929 solarization technique
Nude
We can see how he played with light, like the lines of light colour embodying the figure just on the
left side.
Torso
The transformationnof the body, achieved by putting a kind of a cloth between the camera and the
body, and it is transforming the body, he is playing only with the part of the body, which is the torso,
(Solrization)
A kind of net, projected between the subjest and the camers, and there is something which makes
the model dissappear in the background, which
Femme aux cheveux fue
Fue means out of control
We have the solarization here on nthe right shoulder, here again he is playing wih light, and the eyes
and the lios are white, which is referring to the title word fue, which also means insane in french.
Meret Oppenheim sha was an artist, attracted by surrealism, she participated to some surrealist
exibitions, which was a very rare case of a woman being considered as an artist.
Antonin Artaud
We can see the violence, the inner violence of the man, who would become insane.
1937
He was taking picture of models of couturie
His photography was what paid the bills, working freelance for magazines such as Vogue, Bazaar and
Vanity Fair.
Ready-mades
The object chosen , perhaps the industrial pettern, by the artist and said to be the subject of Art.
Since man ray was a good friend of Marsel duchamp, he was very interested in these ready-mades.
Obstuction
In fact man Ray in 1920 in NY some months before moving to Europe, he rented a room, which was
before occupied by the women wh was making clothes;he put a lot of hongers, one on the other,
creating something abstract, which is like
Objet indestructible
He was depressed because his girlfried left him, he put the eye on the metronome, he decided to
find the solution to find the way out of his
"Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye
to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to
the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow. (1)
With these words, Man Ray declared an art object that was at the edge of his control.
From a top a metronome, a single photographic eye stares out at us with composure. It is a lovely
eye, framed by an elegant brow. The carefully rounded corners of the black-and-white photograph
attest to the care with which it was handled before being paper-clipped to the metronome. Set into
motion, however, the eye aggresses, disturbs, and taunts. Ticking back and forth, it regulates and
controls us, stealing our will to act against it. With nerves frayed and frustration pent up, we are at
the edge. We pick up the hammer, smash the metronome to bits; its springs and weights scatter.
Bent metal and splintered wood fly across the floor. But then we notice that the photograph is not
so damaged. Creased perhaps ... abraded from the scrapes of the shatt the eye still stares placidly,
oblivious to the destruction wrought in its wake.
state of mind, he decided to destroy the instrument, it was presented in the surrealist exibition, and
it was stolen by people angry that this was called the work of art , but not destroyed.
Press-papier Phreabe
Preabe has an oversize size of the sex, he made the penis of the marble
Glass full of metal spheres
His works are really diverse, there are a lot of many topics, he was every time looking to be accepted
as a painter, but he was accepted as a photographer;
but the point is that he really made a revolution in the photography, and even today we have extly
the repetition of the things which had been done by Man Ray.
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The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows - 1916
Seguidilla - 1919
Admiration of the Orchestrelle for the Cinematograph - 1919
The Gift - 1921
Les Champs delicieux (1) - 1922
Les Champs delicieux (2) - 1922
Return to Reason - 1923
Le Violin d'Ingres - 1924
Peggy Guggenheim - 1924
Barbette - 1926
Noire et Blanches - 1926
The Primacy of Matter over Thought - 1929
Anatomies - 1929
Dancer Simone Prieuer - 1930
Electricity - 1931
Les Larmes 1932
Erotique Voilee - 1933
Nude Bent Forward - 1934
Observatory Time-The Lovers - 1936
Nude in Photography - 1937
Model in Wheelbarrow - 1937
Julia - 1942
Les Mains Libres
year: 1937 Theme: Publication
castle water bridge woman lying
year: 1937 Theme: Publication
extract from the album woman nude head upside down
year: 1926 Theme: Dadaïsts Surrealists
sitting facing hands toghether deep looks
Man Ray, Le Violon d'Ingres, 1924
Kiki's back-turned body and the position of her head, turbaned oriental-style, recall Ingres's bathers,
in particular the figure in the foreground of Le Bain turc (Valpinçon Bather), a reference suggested to
Man Ray by the perfection of the young woman's body, which, he says, "would have inspired any
academic painter".
By virtue of the two sound-holes drawn on the print in black lead and Indian ink, the body is
metamorphosed into a violin. While Man Ray is playing with the popular expression in French "to
have an Ingres violin", meaning a consuming hobby (Ingres having been a passionate violinist) he
also intends to show the young woman's eroticism and his own passion: she is his Ingres violin. Thus
the photograph refers to the idea of "amour fou" (mad love), which André Breton himself explores
in the eponymous work of 1937.
Lastly, the comparison between the woman's body and a violin illustrates the principle of the
unexpected encounter, of which the Surrealists were so fond. It is a picture of a woman's back on
which Man Ray painted the sound holes of a violin.
This work--spoofing a painting by the nineteenth-century French artist Ingres--at once jibes playfully
at the "serious" art world and exemplifies the dreamlike eroticism of the surrealists, which often
involved mysterious transformations of the female nude.
He met the young model Alice Prin (Kiki) de Montparnasse, who moved to paris and becae a model,
and was soon appreciated by many artists, because she behaved almost like a man, not a lady. She
died quite young, because she became an alcoholic and a drug-addict. She was with the model of a
very famous "violin d'Ingres". Ingres was the very classist painting , painting the woman of african
origin, adalisque,thus we can see the turban, a special hat.He was attracted by violin and painting,
but he chose painting for his life, but he was playing violin as well. Man ray is connecting the idea of
the violin and the very classical representation of a woman in the paintings by Ingres. Ingres was
very known at that time; it is interesting to know that violin was presenr t in many works by all the
movements in the first part of the XX th century, just because the idea of violin-woman, of playing
on the violin, which equals of course an erotic idea;
The picture of the lips in the sky, the lips are separated from the context of the face;
The chess board is perhaps the connection with marsel Duchamp; who became a chess player,
thusthe pcture is th eresult of chance, and we can see that the lips look exacctly like the body below.
It is differnt from rayography, but its a mix of it and solarization, he is putting elements here
suggesting electricity, and quite of ten s is using just torso as it was in antique sculpture
During his time in France, he produced unique art pieces which came to be known as ‘Rayogrammes’
– pictures produced on photographic paper without the use of a camera; the subject is lain directly
on the paper, light is exposed to it and then the paper is developed. The shadow of the subject is
what creates the image, which stressed the influence of light and shadow rather than the
importance of the image itself. One of Rays most famous ‘Rayogrammes’ being: ‘Electricity’ (1931).
"Black and white" 1926
White face of Kiki de montparnasse, and the black african mask, we have the opposition between
colours as well as the position of the face and of the mask. Black and white- it was the photogrphy at
that time. The third approach can perhaps be a very strong idea of contestation of colonialism,
because all the modern artists were very critical to the situation with the colonial policy of the
countries, invading the poorest countries of Africa.Perhaps, thre is an idea of opposing of white
people and black people;
There is a second version "Black and White" 1926
the same but everything is reversed, it was done in order to renew the idea.
1921
Iron
He decided to destroy of the iron being very smooth and he put some nails on the surface, making
he iron a subject which can't be used any moreHe glued tacks on the flat bottom of the iron; by
depriving it of its functionality, he transformed it into an aesthetic object, absurd and menacing, that
he called The Gift.
"Veiled Erotic" 1933
Inspired by the text of Bréton, who was making a great difference between erotism and
pornography, erotism considered by him as provoking desire, although pornography was
condemned.
Man ray made an illustration of the idea of bréton, we can see a printing press, a wheel at that time,
and he used the nudity of Oppenheim, with the printing press, hiding all the features hinting of
femininity, like breast, genitals, but at the same time th handle of the wheel in connectin being
closed to genitals ofa woman are perhaps the way to hav fun, because it looks like a male sex.
It is somehow the representation of a new woman, which is not woman, but perhaps with more
masculine features, which of course influenced by the World War I , when all the man were involved
in the war, and the women had to take the controlling position, they had to do the thing which never
before relied on them, from that time many women began to be independent from men, and it was
the beginning of a social revolution, hus the picture is revealing this the situation in the society.
1922
The hands of Antonin Artaud
The lams od sugar are representing the keys of the piano
Année: 1922 Thème: Femmes
portrait femme de face avec bougé " le portrait de mon âme "
1930
1934
La robe noire
"Connect art and fashion"
It looks like a dress, but it is a sheet of plastic, and it gives and idea of wave, just as the waves of the
sea
Année: 1930 Thème: Femmes
modèle nu en buste bras relevé fond blanc - solarisation
Another famous picture solarization technique
Now we have the black line embodying the figure, and of course there is no more background, in
previous s well, just as if it was the iconic vision of a woman.
1931
MaN Ray Self portarait int the solarization, he represenrs himself, disconnected form the ground
and the camera, which gives us an idea that ther is nothing else for the artist than his personality
and is instrument. He is givving the impression of lightness to the camera which in fact was really a
very heavy at that time.
Minotaur 1935
1934 Minotaur, the female body transforming into the head of the bull, minotaur, with the idea of
A monster;
Max ernst in solarization 1935
Man ray trued to develp the subject with keeping "unimportant" part, and we have an impression
that Max Ernst is not undergane by the laws of gravity
Année: 1945 Thème: 0
femme nue avec turban sur la tête, à travers un rideau à lamelles horizontales
year: 1920
coat-hangers hanging lamp ceiling
La femme aux cheveux fue
ear: 1923 Theme: 0
Metronome with a picture of an eye
Original picture made by Man Ray of it original object
a metal bird cage, painted white, containing 151 marble cubes, a thermometer, and a piece of
cuttlebone--the internal shell of a squid-like creature, used, according to the dictionary, as "a dietary
supplement for caged birds.